Motherhood – Contemporary Transitions and Generational Change

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Tina Miller is a Professor of Sociology at Brookes University in Oxford. Her research and teaching interests include motherhood and fatherhood transitions, constructions of gender and identities, masculinities, reproductive health, narratives, qualitative research methods and ethics and she regularly publishes in these areas. Tina has lived and worked in the Solomon Islands and Bangladesh as well as Oxford and has a particular interest in cultural dimensions and the situated nature of everyday experiences. She has presented her work in many countries, including Chile, Australia, India and Argentina. She regularly participates in TV and radio programmes in relation to her research and publications on motherhood, fatherhood and managing paid work and care in contemporary family lives.

In this lunchtime seminar, Tina will speak about her research comparing two studies conducted across two generations, exploring women's experiences of becoming first-time mothers. Through richly narrated, real-time accounts of transition, Tina Miller examines what has changed since her original study was conducted in the 1990s. Using sociological and feminist perspectives, she analyses how motherhood has further intensified against a harsher neoliberal backdrop. Her research examines the social, political and moral contours in which motherhood is situated which, in the contemporary context, include ideas of planned labours and work/life balance as part of potent, maternal prenatal imaginings. Birth continues to change everything, and the qualitative, longitudinal and comparative data show these ideas to be, mostly, illusory.

The Judith Lumley Centre lunchtime seminars are free and open to all.  Held on the first Wednesday of every month from February to December. These seminars showcase the work of national and international academics/researchers.

Find out more about the School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Judith Lumley Centre